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Shaping Your Organisation’s Narrative Infrastructure A GUIDE
Jess SchulschenkStephanie Bertels
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 2
Shaping Your Organisation’s Narrative Infrastructure
Prepared by Jess Schulschenk and Stephanie Bertels
This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License. You are free to share (copy and redistribute the material in
any medium or format) or adapt (remix, transform, and build upon) the material
with appropriate attribution. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to
the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable
manner, but not in any way that suggests that the authors or The Embedding
Project endorse you or your use of our work product.
Schulschenk. J, and Bertels, S. (2020) Shaping Your Organisation’s Narrative Infrastructure Embedding Project.DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.11362895
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 3
Introduction 4
What is storytelling and why does it matter? 4
Key terms 5 Understand your organisation’s current narrative infrastructure 6 Exercise: Understand your organisation’s narrative infrastructure 6 Assess what should be amplified and what needs to shift 9 Exercise: Assessing existing narratives 10 Introduce a new organisational narrative 13 Exercise: Exploring the creation of a new organisational narrative 13 Support your organisation as it shifts the stories it tells 17 Exercise: Supporting a shift in narrative infrastructure 17 Mechanisms to support shifting your narrative infrastructure 18 Narrative Infrastructure Template 19 Endnotes 21 Acknowledgements 22
Contents
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 4
Stories matter, they have an enormous influence on decision-making in organisations.
How often do you stop to reflect on the collection of stories that get told in your
organisation and whether you might need to shift them to better embed sustainability?
This guide builds on our work on Storytelling for Sustainability and is based on
four years of research and over 100 interviews in twenty different global companies
exploring the impact of organisational narratives and how change agents helped to
shift them to better support strategic decision-making aligned with sustainability. As
with all of our resources, the ideas and guidance presented here have been piloted
with several of our partner companies and we welcome your feedback to keep
improving them.
What is storytelling and why does it matter?When people in organisations communicate, they often do it through stories1. Stories
reinforce and give life to an organisation’s identity and values and they are often
invoked to justify decision-making. As a result, stories can both guide and constrain
how an organisation sets its strategy and how organisational members work to deliver
on it.
When you are working towards embedding sustainability into your organisation’s
strategy, you will need to pay attention to the stories and metaphors that guide the
decisions that are considered to be legitimate within day-to-day organisational life.
As you try to help your organisation to embed sustainability in its business practices,
you may be able to leverage and redeploy existing stories. You may also find that you
bump up against established stories that undermine your efforts. In these cases, you
may need to reshape established stories or share new ones that better align with the
organisation’s shift towards sustainability.
This collection of stories is what we refer to as your organisation’s narrative
infrastructure. In this guide, we help you to reflect on how to shift your organisation’s
narrative infrastructure. When exploring this topic, you may find it helpful to read our
guide on Storytelling for Sustainability that explores how to construct a compelling
story2.
Introduction
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 5
Key termsNARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE is the collection of ideas, stories, and metaphors that
shapes what is considered to be important in an organisation. The people working
in your organization draw on its narrative infrastructure to make judgments about
routine decisions quickly and efficiently. While narrative infrastructure speeds up
routine decision-making, it also constrains the range of organisational responses.
An organisation’s narrative infrastructure is made up of a handful of dominant
organisational narratives. These can be thought of as the ‘big stories’ that express the
identity, purpose, and/or strategy of the organisation.
SUPPORTING STORIES provide specific examples of events and experiences that
give meaning to one or more organisational narratives. These are the ‘little stories’,
examples, and metaphors that are invoked in the moment to justify or explain.
Successful supporting stories are often a combination of personal reflections and key
supporting data. They can enable the telling of a significant sequence of events or
signal which values are important to the organisation.
In this guide, we help you understand and shape your organisation’s narrative
infrastructure in four key steps:
Understand your organisation’s current narrative infrastructure
Assess what should be amplified and what needs to shift
Introduce a new organisational narrative
Support your organisation as it shifts the stories it tells
Figure 1: Key steps in shifting an organisation’s narrative infrastructure.
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 6
Before thinking about shifting your organisation’s narrative infrastructure, you will first
need to take some time to understand the dominant narratives that inform decision-
making in your company.
Most companies tend to have about three to five dominant organisational narratives.
These organisational narratives may have been crafted by and shared by leaders,
but they may also be shaped by the broader organisational community including
employees or those external to the organisation.
It is important to consider both the formal organisational narratives contained in
marketing materials, websites, and corporate reports, as well as the more informal
narratives that are shared in the corridors or in private conversations.
You will want to reflect on potential inconsistencies between these formal and
informal narratives and how these play out in your organisation. Similarly, it is
important to consider narratives in which the organisation is painted in a positive
light, as well as those that are more critical. Critical narratives may be uncomfortable
to explore, but they can have a significant influence on decision-making.
Use the following questions to help you to identify the core organisational narratives
that define and drive decision-making in your organisation, as well as any critical or
inconsistent narratives that may become important in later steps.
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
Understand your organisation’s current narrative infrastructure
Exercise: Understand your organisation’s narrative infrastructure
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 7
Reflect on the content in your website and key company reports. What key formal
narratives are advanced here that shape decision-making in your company? For
example, ‘we are innovative’ or ‘we put health and safety above all’.
Next, consider the narratives that may be shared informally, such as in conversations
between colleagues. For instance, what are the narratives that current employees
would share with a new employee to help them understand how and why strategic
decisions are made in the organisation? For example, ‘this is a caring company’, or
‘it’s all about quarterly financial targets here’, or even ‘we say we care about diversity,
but we don’t really’.
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 8
Next, think about some specific supporting stories that are often repeated in your
organisation as a way to give expression to these dominant narratives. For instance, a
story often shared by colleagues about how a now successful product was designed
by a team of in house engineers who turned a waste stream into a new product
offering may speak to a dominant organisational narrative of being resourceful. List
some of these key supporting stories here:
You can use the template at the end of this guide to start to fill out these
existing organisational narratives (ON1, ON2, ON3) and supporting stories you
have identified (SS1 – SS5).
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
Figure 2: Start to fill out your existing organisational narratives and supporting stories.
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 9
Reflecting on the organisational narratives and supporting stories you have just
identified, what should be amplified and what may need to change? Which narratives
are already serving your agenda well, and which might be redeployed?
If some are holding your organisation back, it may be necessary to support the
organisation to let go of stories that prohibit sustainability from being acted on as a
strategic imperative.
For example, a company may need to reconsider a narrative of ‘profit as priority at all
costs’ to improve its health and safety performance.
The next exercise will help you assess what you can leverage from the existing
narrative infrastructure and what might need to be suppressed or replaced.
Assess what should be amplified and what needs to shift
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 10
Exercise: Assessing existing narratives
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
Reflect on your answers to the first worksheet when working through the following
questions:
Amplify: Can existing narratives be amplified or redeployed?
Try to think about ways to strengthen the existing narratives in your organisation that
support your sustainability efforts. Are there existing narratives that can be proactively
amplified or redeployed to support the desired shift? Are there any explicit narratives
that don’t appear to be strongly understood or that would benefit from reinforcement
through intentional storytelling?
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 11
Also, are there any implicit narratives that are broadly supported and may benefit
from more explicit articulation and enrichment? Is there an existing narrative that
could be expanded, re-interpreted or redeployed?
Deconstruct: Should existing narrative infrastructure be suppressed?
Are there any narratives you have identified that are not supporting your efforts to
embed sustainability? Try to put your finger on what’s not working.
For example, reframing a dominant narrative on quarterly financial returns can be
productively reframed around intergenerational wealth creation. Sometimes, it may
be only one aspect of the narrative, it may be a particular story, or even aspects of
which choices are emphasised within the stories.
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 12
Connect: Can existing narratives be bridged? Should new narrative infrastructure be created and connected?
You may be able to identify gaps in your current narrative infrastructure and as a result,
there may be opportunities to introduce new supporting stories that strategically bridge
between existing narratives or bridge to a new organisational narrative (discussed
in the next section). Think here about the ways in which existing and new narrative
infrastructure might be connected. For example, connecting two existing narratives on
quality and partnerships can help to show how collaborating on sustainability efforts can
improve the quality of your product offering.
Consider the possible adaptations to your existing narrative infrastructure as shown in
the image below, and which changes you would make to your organisation’s narrative
infrastructure, as captured in the template at the end of this guide.
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
Figure 3: Consider the possible adaptations to your existing narrative infrastructure.
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 13
Introduce a new organisational narrativeIf you find that amplifying, connecting or deconstructing existing narratives is not
sufficient, you may need to consider introducing a new organisational narrative.
We suggest that you start by exploring your motivations for introducing a new
organisational narrative. You may want to consider whether existing narratives are
problematic, conflicting, or simply insufficient. Is a new narrative being triggered by
internal or external events, or a combination of both? Write down why you are trying
to shape a new organisational narrative in the space below.
Exercise: Exploring the creation of a new organisational narrative
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 14
Next, think about what this new organisational narrative could be and describe it in
the space below. Also think about how this emerging narrative connects with existing
narratives. For example, an existing narrative around financial stewardship for clients
combined with new information relating to climate change and stranded assets
could be built into a potential new narrative around responsible or resilient financial
stewardship.
Consider involving others in this step. A participatory co-creation process with key
influencers in your organisation will strengthen the understanding of and commitment
to a new organisational narrative. As you describe the emerging narrative, remember
the following pointers:
Organisational narratives
• Express the identity, purpose, and strategy of the organisation;
• Honestly capture the essence of people’s day-to-day experiences;
• Should be in language that everyone in the organisation understands, and in
time, can explain easily to others.
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 15
The next step is to develop this further by articulating supporting (or ‘little’) stories
that give expression to the new organisational narrative. Supporting stories help to
explore, discuss, and better understand the new organisational narrative so that it can
be integrated into the company’s strategy and strategic decision-making processes.
You can use existing supporting stories or create new ones.
Are you able to connect any of the existing supporting stories with the new
organisational narrative? Create links between these stories (SS1 – SS5) and your new
organisational narrative (ON4) in the template at the end of the guide, as illustrated
in Figure 4.
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
?
Figure 4: Are you able to create links between the stories in SS1-SS5, and your new organisational narrative (ON4)?
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 16
Next, try to identify new supporting stories that bring your new organisational
narrative to life. For each supporting story try to capture its essence in only one
sentence. Remember to consider both formal and informal sources when trying to
gather these narratives.
You can capture these new stories in blocks SS6 and SS7 in the template at the end
of this guide, as illustrated in Figure 5.
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
Figure 5: Blocks SS6 and SS7 will be used for new supporting stories.
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 17
Support your organisation as it shifts the stories it tellsOnce you have mapped out the desired shifts in your narrative infrastructure, the final
step is to plan how you will accomplish that shift by considering how you might make
use of written, oral, and visual media and by thinking about the resources and people
you may need to enlist along the way.
A key component of shifting narrative infrastructure will involve capturing and crafting
new supporting stories or deliberately reframing existing supporting stories. Our
Storytelling for Sustainability Guide provides more detail and examples of how to
capture and craft stories.
Building organisational members’ understanding and ownership of new narratives
and new supporting stories takes sustained engagement over time. The next page
details some mechanisms to support in shifting your narrative infrastructure.
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
Exercise: Supporting a shift in narrative infrastructure
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 18
• Develop conversational competencies: the work to shape narratives is mostly
conversational and to be successful requires the development of listening and
dialogue skills.
• Include the key messages and supporting stories you want to amplify in formal
communication channels, such as company magazines and reports.
• Use short videos for internal audiences to formalise and share some of the
most compelling supporting stories. We have found that internal audiences
benefit from stories that are shared with authenticity that invite them to be
part of the change movement, as opposed to glossy marketing materials.
• Help executive leaders to feel comfortable telling these new stories in internal
and external platforms.
• Encourage managers to share supporting stories during meetings or other
daily talks. Then invite employees to share their experiences as well.
• Make an online platform available where employees can read and comment
on the new stories and also share some of their own.
• Set aside dedicated time for employees and leaders to discuss and debate
the shifting narrative infrastructure and supporting stories in facilitated
workshops.
UNDERSTAND ASSESS INTRODUCE SUPPORT
Mechanisms to support shifting your narrative infrastructure:
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 19
Narrative Infrastructure TemplateYou may benefit from using the template on the next page to explore the exercises
within this guide to capture your organisation’s narrative infrastructure.
Are you working to shift the stories that get told in your organisation?Reach out to us. We would love to hear from you!
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 20
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 21
1Boyce, M. E. (1996). Organisational story and storytelling: a critical
review. Journal of organisational change management, 9(5), 5-26.
DOI:10.1108/09534819610128760.
2Amlani, A., Bertels, S., and Hadler, T. (2016). Storytelling for Sustainability.
Embedding Project. DOI:10.6084/m9.figshare.3439517.v1.
Endnotes
SHAPING YOUR ORGANISATION’S NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE 22
Acknowledgements
The Embedding Project is hosted by the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University.
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
and contributions from our partner companies:
https://embeddingproject.org/community
We would also like thank our Embedding Project research partners Lulamile Makaula, Ralph Hamann, and Sonya Samson for their contributions to this guide.
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